Whether you are looking to get more engagements on your website or trying to convert your potential leads into customers, LinkedIn Conversation Ads are the best possible marketing formats rolled by any social network so far.
As revealed by a recent report, around 3.09 billion people from all around the world are using social messaging applications to communicate. This figure is expected to raise up to 3.51 billion users in the upcoming few years. Thus, it is now the right time to shift our conventional marketing techniques to one-on-one conversations.
To meet this rising demand for conversational marketing, LinkedIn has introduced a whole new ad format typically known as Conversation ads.
Here is how you can use LinkedIn Conversation Ads for higher-quality engagements with your potential customers. But before we hop into the details let’s understand what LinkedIn Conversation Ads are and how they work.
Let’s Understand What LinkedIn Conversation Ads Actually Are!
As the name suggests, LinkedIn Conversation Ads are message-based ad formats launched by LinkedIn recently. This messaging-ad-format is specially designed to interact personally with prospects for more conversions.
The conversation ads are built on the Sponsored InMail (former extension of LinkedIn Message ads) and have come up with some unique features for higher quality engagement.
Some of the features that make it the best marketing tool are its “choose your own path” features and customized CTAs. These features allow businesses to design full-funnel campaigns by providing them with numerous customization options.
Why Should a Business Shift to LinkedIn Conversation Ads?
Here are the reasons why LinkedIn Conversation ads have become a necessity for modern businesses:
Higher Real-Time Engagement
The real-time conversation is considered a far effective way to engage customers than forcing potential buyers to go through the lead capture forms and other similar tools. Following these conventional marketing tactics, businesses also have to wait for days and months to get a response from their potential customers.
Contrary to this tools like LinkedIn Conversation Ads, enable you to have higher real-time engagement. It helps the advertisers to interact personally with every potential buyer thus increasing the likelihood of greater leads.
Great Impact On the Purchase Intent
As a result of greater real-time engagement, the advertisers will be able to create a higher impact on the purchase intent of their potential buyers using LinkedIn ads.
These ads are designed in a way that they will only be sent to the prospects when they are active on LinkedIn. Thus, these two-way conversation ads are incredible tools in identifying the potential purchaser’s intent.
Detailed Reporting
Another reason why businesses must switch to LinkedIn conversation ads is its advanced analytic reporting feature. This advanced reporting feature of LinkedIn ads enables you to have a better understanding of your potential buyer’s intention and the deeper insights help you make better decisions.
Relevant Content For Each Prospect
The conventional marketing tools often work on a set of target audiences and they work in a generalized format. Unlike the previously said marketing tools LinkedIn Conversation Ad campaign address the needs of each prospect.
These ad campaigns instantly address the interest areas of potential customers and the personalized formats help you offer the information that is most interesting to the particular prospect.
How to Set Up Best LinkedIn Conversation Ad Campaign? 6 Important Tips
Following are the best practices advertisers must follow to launch a success-driven Conversation Ad:
1. Know Your Target Audience
In order to drive brand consideration and traffic on your website, target your audience and create customized plans for them. Use the targets that have performed well in numerous other advertising campaigns, particularly on LinkedIn.
You must also retarget your website visitors but don’t forget to exclude your previous convertors. Based on your previous targets and conversations, recreate your target ads for more conversions. It is also essential to know that different marketing goals require different types of conversation and similar is the case for your target audience.
2. Plan Your Budget Before Bidding
LinkedIn Conversation Ads gives two budgeting options, either will have to select a daily budget or you have to rely on the total budget. You might be thinking about what is the difference between a daily and a total budget, following are the factor based on which you can select a daily or a total budget.
Daily Budget:
You can use the daily budget when your audience is large. This helps you create campaigns for more than 100K members.
If you are relying on the daily budget, your campaigns will always remain on. There won’t be any particular end date for your offer.
Total Budget:
Contrary to the daily budget, the total budget will enable you to create campaigns for a smaller audience. The limit of the audience that you can campaign for is less than 100k. The total budget is well suited for campaigns that you can run for a niche audience. Here you also set an end date and your members have to sign up at least 24 hours earlier.
If you are selecting the Daily Budget, it is suggested to bid somewhere within the specified bid range. After biding, keep track of your spending for a few days. If the results suggest that your daily budget cap is being hit, decrease your bid, if the results are otherwise increase your bid because it means you might be winning out.
While using the Total Budget, keep your bid at the top of the specified bid range and make sure to remain competitive as compared to your competitors.
3. Select Your Sender Wisely
Selecting your sender wisely while incorporating your ad campaigns is necessary because the sender is the person who represents your brand. So, it is important to understand who your audience will consider best to communicate with.
You have to understand that people don’t want to interact with machines; if at any point in time they feel like they aren’t talking to a human, they will stop the conversation there and then. So, make sure your selected sender has a high-quality LinkedIn profile.
You can also send different variations of ads from different senders to check the effectiveness of your sender. According to the successful advertisers, the productivity of ads sent from member senders has remained higher than the ads sent from company pages.
4. Focus on Personalized Content
Make your prospect feel as if your content is specially designed for them. Start with introducing your name, title/designation and introduce the company that you are representing. Following this, inform your prospect about why you are reaching them.
Throughout your conversation, stick to your conversational tone, it will give your prospective customers an idea that your brand is authentic. So you should aim for casual language and keep your conversation simple and friendly.
One of the best practices for instant personalization is to add a member’s LinkedIn profile data into your ad. For example, if you are interacting with a director, you will first add their name, followed by their title and company name to increase the click-through rate.
Studies have also revealed that adding a company name and receiver’s title can boost the click-through rate to a considerable level.
5. Include CTA Button and Link Them to Your Landing Pages
LinkedIn Conversation Ads must be designed in a way that it should take the prospect 2-5 layers deeper. Every single message should be accompanied by two call-to-action buttons; this will increase the quality of engagement thus generating greater leads.
While adding the call-to-action buttons make sure you are not including buttons like “Not Interested” or “No Thanks” in the initial layer of your conversation. Doing so will allow your prospect to close the ad immediately. Instead of buttons like “Not Interested” or “No Thanks”, you can add CTAs that allow them to learn more about your product/service.
It is also important to link the CTAs to your website or landing pages. If you are trying to convey complex information about your product or service, link the CTAs to your web pages that address the prospect’s required information. One of the best practices when linking the CTAs to your landing pages is, you must create dedicated landing pages that contain personalized content. Connecting your prospects to generalized information might not help in the success of your ad campaign.
6. Count on a Banner Image
The next magic tool that can contribute to your LinkedIn Conversation ad’s success is the banner image. A custom banner can be added once you have wisely picked your sender. This banner will be visible for the prospect in the top right corner or their screen. Also, note that the banner image can only be visible on a desktop.
As suggested by LinkedIn the appropriate size for the banner is 300 x 250 pixels and the size must not exceed 2MB. However, you can design the banner in any size and format according to your needs.
Lastly, if you are working on a lead generation format, don’t forget to add a lead generation form in your ad campaign.
Also, Read 21 Most Efficient Digital Marketing Tools For Your Business Success
The Bottom Line
For a successful LinkedIn Conversation Ad Campaign, you must think beyond just an ad. Narrating the same story in the conversations and on the post-click page might not help in generating leads. Thus, it is essential to create personalized content for your prospects both in your conversation ads and on the post-click pages.
